Britishsportsguy

It's mainly going to concentrate on stuff. With a slight chance of rain

Saturday, August 28, 2004

Well, let's see. "The Adam & Joe Show" is officially great, but then you already new that. And if you didn't, well, why are you waiting? Shell out, loser!

But I think it's high time I trawled through some of my links, to pick out some of the choice ones. So, let's start with my regular haunt, the Cartoons section, especially after I've axed some of the crap.

So, Boondocks. Tricky one, as part of me felt I should have axed it when I got rid of things like Jane's World. Has occasional sparks of humour, so I'm sticking with it for now. D for effort.

Daily Telegraph. Some might question having those lovable Barclay Bros' latest acquirement in the cartoons but in both Matt and Alex they have some outstanding cartoons. Ok, in Matt they do - there's no better front page british cartoonist - and I've only seen Gary Larson do better one framers in my time so far. Alex is a tad repetitive and yet can be quite inventive. And, according to my sources, gives a true picture of the City in London.

Dilbert, Dilbert. There was a time, around three years ago, when Dilbert was my cartoon of choice, the first to save off any sinking ship of comics. But now, while still being in my top five, the storylines are starting to look a touch jaded. Wally is still the best thing in it, closely followed by Dogbert and pointy haired one, but still...it just feels, dare one say, formulaic on its bad days.

Doonesbury. Ignore the politics, this is one of the best cartoons ever. Yes, you have to take the liberal slant whatever your own personal stance is (me, doesn't matter and i'm not going to swing my cock of politics around) but even then there's usually a good punchline. BD, Zonker, Mike....timeless characters and when its good, it cannot be bettered - especially the off the wall stuff, usually in Mike's summer fantasy or the like.

Funky Winderbean survived the cull, surprisingly. Probably down to a cutesy value which just tugs and some nice characters. But not much else. Towards the back of my starting lineup, probably occupying the left back position.

Garfield. My first love of cartoons came from Jim Davis' cat and Peanuts. Now less funny than then, but still has a certain je ne sais que. Which is french for bit poor but occasionally raises laughter lines. The movie will be terrible though.

Get Fuzzy. If I save one cartoon, this would be it. Frankly it wins hands down just on the quality of the drawing but when you add in characters like Satchel and above all Bucky Katt....the mould's been broken after this one and grab it while you can - quality humour always gets trashed in the long run. A work of genius.

Mega Tokyo is probably one of the most bizarre strips in here, takes the longest to load up but looks beautiful and reads well. Plot is tricky to follow so don't even try, just bathe in the brillance of the drawing.

Monty is what Robotman became, cartoon strip historians. And well, its easily one of the funniest cartoons around, despite having the feel of a slightly thrown together US sitcom like Man About the House or suchlike. Yet it's the pop culture references combined with the range of characters - small, but each gets time in the limelight therefore allowing others to appear fresher. The B plus of the group.

Peanuts. Charles Schulz, RIP, you gave the world Snoopy, Charlie Brown and a whole host of great people, we shan't forget. Catch the reruns, currently in 1970 at the moment.

Pearls Before Swine is like the twin worlds of pop culture and cartoons had a bastard lovechild. Cruel, vindictive and hugely funny. If it didn't occasionally labour a joke, Stephen Pastis's strip would be up against Fuzzy at the top. Rat is a character to rival Bucky.

Spidey is spidey. And until there's online batman and superman, is going to be the only Marvel/DC strip on here - none of the rest cut it for me.

The Trigan Empire - can be in English or, I think, Dutch at times as whoever is behind this site gives us the fabulous world of Trig in one frame at a time. If you ever read Look and Learn you will know this, if not just know that it's an action strip set on the distant planet of Trigon and we're currently around 600 frames in from the start - so go play catch up!

Finally Userfriendly. You have to be willing not to get every joke unless you are a complete geek but this does have a certain appeal, despite a fair amount of poor drawing - Illiad, learn how to draw women! And in Dustpuppy has cute and bizarre combined.

So there you go, those are the cartoons here and why I keep them. Stand by for more of "Why are these Sodding links clogging up the right hand side of my viewing?" link fans! Toodley bye!

Sunday, August 15, 2004

Well, what have we here, three months go past - I couldn't stop them - and Wales is basking in sunlight. So that's all right then. Asides from that, well the radio side goes ok, generally all is moving forward - it's a general life thing that I prefer to do work which moves things forward instead of merely repeating necessary tasks (for instance washing the car - it has to be done every so often but never actually turns the car into a sports model, non?).

On the news front, is our beloved Home Secretary ever going to keep his mouth shut on ANY issue or not go over board? He's already cocked up a couple of times majorly (Humberside springs to mind)...maybe Dave has something in the files on Tony...